Tencent Has A Tiny Gadget For Weixin Lovers, An Earphones With a Push-to-Talk Button

With over 100m users and dramatic growth, Weixin is becoming a life style for Chinese like people here indulging in QQ. Tencent is not only looking at the big picture of Internet TV market by bringing you the iCE Screen, but also working on some tiny things which may make your digital life more easier.

ZHANG Xiaolong, the leader of Weixin team posted a photo on his Weixin account. It’s an earphones. Like Apple’s one, it comes with convenient buttons that let you adjust volume, control music and video playback and (possibly) even answer or end calls on your iPhone. The interesting bit is that it also has a PUSH button which allow you send Weixin voice message. So no need look at the screen when using Weixin, you can just use the Playback button to listen to coming message and hold the PUSH button to send out voice message.

Weixin team is based in Shenzhen where you may find tens of hardware manufacturers, so making a tiny gadget like that should not be a big deal. We are not sure yet how Tencent’s going to do with this earphones (a real product for sale or just a gift for fun?) and how much it costs. The thing is what Tencent’s doing on hardware and on Weixin is getting more and more interesting, isn’t?

 

 

Related posts:

1. Tencent Weixin’s Open Platform Launched
2. Rumor, Tencent Wants Its Weixin To Rock Global Market
3. Breaking, Pony Ma Confirms that Tencent’s Weixin Has Reached 100 Million Users

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The China R&D Dilemma for Foreign Tech Companies [INTERVIEW]

China is changing the game in international innovation and research and development (R&D). According to Professor Seamus Grimes, a research professor in Social Sciences and Public Policy at the NUI Galway, China has long since decided that “it is no longer willing to be the minor partner in terms of added value and profitability” in any industry. The demands of authorities for ‘indigenous innovation’ represent, he says, a kind of gamble for multinational corporations; for access to the huge Chinese market, foreign firms put their innovations on the line. But Professor Grimes, from his field visits to Chinese R&D departments as part of his work at NUI Galway, insists that overseas companies like Nokia (HEL:NOK1V; NYSE:NOK) are not in direct danger from their helping out in this indigenous innovation. Yet there are warning lessons for other companies from Motorola and Nokia both struggling in China in the long-term despite their significant investment in local R&D. And let’s not forget China’s new giants, such as ZTE (HKG:0763; SHE:000063) and Huawei. To discuss whether China might be bending the rules on innovation, and to ponder the rise of China’s own R&D, Seamus (pictured below) agreed to field a few of my questions (note that the footnotes are mine): 1. You’ve written a lot of the “growing internationalisation of R&D activity” – how has that worked out in China in recent years? Seamus: It’s not very many years since the general pattern was that the greater part of R&D activity took place either in the company’s home country and also at headquarters. The greater part of multinational R&D continues to take place in the world’s more developed regions, but things have begun to change in more recent years as multinationals have become more globalised through outsourcing and offshoring. During this more recent period locations within the so-called BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) countries have become increasingly attractive locations for decentralising some aspects of multinational R&D activity. But it is important to realise that in the overall context this important development remains a small, but rapidly growing part of the total. Obviously the huge growth in foreign investment in China in recent years has added greatly to China’s attractiveness as a location for R&D activity. In many cases, foreign-invested companies have played a major role in the initial period of China’s integration into the global economy, and in some ways the more recent focus on R&D reflects a maturing of the profile of investment. In addition to using China as a low cost manufacturing location, many multinational companies have been placing a greater focus on the China market and on their need to learn to compete effectively within that market, not only with other multinational companies, but increasingly with some very effective Chinese companies. While the focus of the R&D activity in China can have various aspects to it related to both the local market and global activities, the need to develop products more suited to this increasingly important market has been a driving force. The recent policy push of the Chinese government towards ‘indigenous innovation’ has also been very significant. This means that to ensure access to China’s market and, particularly to the significant public procurement part of that market, there was increasing pressure on foreign companies to develop products in China, register intellectual property locally, and use Chinese technology standards. 2. What about fears of theft of intellectual property (IP) – of business and innovation ideas being stolen? Seamus: There are widespread concerns about IP in China, and at the same time there is general acknowledgement among foreign companies that progress is being made, particularly in relation to the IP regime which has been put in place. The difficulty lies with implementation and judicial independence. There is a strong culture of copying and reengineering products [1] by Chinese companies and changing this culture will take considerable time. The key challenges for multinationals (MNCs) when doing R&D in China (courtesy of Prof. Grimes) Major consultants advise foreign companies to adopt specific strategies to avoid IP being stolen, such as not introducing their latest technology to China, or in some ways fragmenting the R&D process so that the end product would be difficult to commercialise. But the attractiveness of a market, still experiencing significant growth, relative to the rest of the world, can be too alluring for some companies and they are prepared to gamble. Specific evidence of IP theft is difficult to unearth apart from particular court cases [2], but there have been many media reports and certainly companies are highly cautious about losing IP in China. 3. Often, ‘technology transfer’ is a legal requirement of doing such business in China. But isn’t that just feeding your smaller rivals until they’ve grown up enough to bite you? Seamus: I’m sure that is how some doing business in China see it, but there are many different perspectives and also different experiences. Initially the policy was technology transfer for market access with the requirement to establish a joint venture with a local company. Since accession to the WTO, things have loosened up somewhat, but strangely have tightened in others, because of this new focus on ‘indigenous innovation’. Basically the initial policy was not particularly successful. Some academic studies suggest that local companies for a variety of reasons, such as low technological capabilities, did not really benefit from technology spillovers. However a growing number of Chinese companies have emerged in various sectors such as telecoms equipment, which have not only dominated the local market, but have become global players in a few cases [3]. Although the multinational business R&D model is globally-oriented and is not directed towards benefiting local companies that can then become competitors, my experience is that multinationals in China are prepared to give something back to China for the opportunity of benefitting from the market and the Chinese talent. It’s the bargaining process around this between multinational companies and the Chinese state which is fascinating. China pushes very hard, and then over time makes some realistic adjustments. But the political thinking driving the push for ‘indigenous innovation’, which is geared towards greater technological autonomy for China, is a considerable worry for many companies. From China’s perspective, it is no longer willing to be the minor partner in terms of added value and profitability, while the lion’s share goes to the owners of IP in the form of royalties and license fees [4]. The other aspect of this relates to how the Chinese market has been evolving over time, with a growing middle class of consumers. In the initial period the multinationals with their focus on the luxury market had little or no competition in China. The only problem arose with significant areas of the economy still restricted to state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Restrictions still continue, but the main difference is the rise of Chinese competitors from the lower tiers of the market. Now the multinationals are facing intense competition for middle tier China; and in many respects, the local companies, while not being major investors in R&D, are very adept at taking existing technology and adapting it to the local market. The new policy context of indigenous innovation puts further pressure on multinationals to comply with the Chinese state’s own model of moving further towards technological autonomy. So, in a sense, you are correct to say that it might benefit local rivals. But China may be one of the first countries in the world, because of its political system and its huge market, which could bring about a significant change in the traditional multinational R&D model. 4. Could that huge change you mentioned actually see a major company like ZTE or Huawei, become a R&D powerhouse itself, with labs across the globe? Are China's native R&D ambitions achievable? Seamus: This has already happened to some extent, but there continues to be considerable ambivalence about some of the very successful Chinese companies, in terms of their ability to be truly innovative and to be true technology leaders. There is considerable admiration throughout China and beyond for Huawei’s achievements in a relatively short period, but to suggest that such companies may be the leading multinationals of the future may be going too far. Certainly some of the competitor companies such as Nortel and many others, which were major players in the Chinese market in the earlier period of foreign investment have suffered decline and have seen market share, not only in China but in other parts of the world acquired by Chinese companies. There is always media speculation about the role of the Chines state in the rise of local companies, and no doubt China has had a policy of national champions and of providing financing to help Chinese companies expand globally. In the case of Huawei, however, much of its success derived from its ability to adopt technology for the Chinese market, initially in rural regions and lower tier cities and work upwards. It also moved into developing countries where there was less competition from other multinationals, and more recently has won contracts in many developed countries. Political suspicions continue to dog its efforts to penetrate the US market. But its overall approach has been quite professional, developing alliances with other major technology companies in the west and, as you suggest, establishing many R&D centres outside of China. It has also built up a huge number of both Chinese and international patents. In many ways it is seen as providing a model for other Chinese companies to become more global. The major question that is more difficult to answer is whether many Chinese companies will become true innovators and become known as significant technology leaders. This has not happened to any great extent to date. 5. Amidst all this competition as China opened up, has any Western company, from your field-work and observations, actually lost out due to its China-based R&D? Examples might be the decline of Nokia and Motorola [5] in China? Or was that entirely due to consumers and regular market forces? Seamus: There is little doubt that some foreign multinational companies in China have lost out, but there probably are a number of reasons both relating to China and their position in the global market why this might be the case. It is a fascinating question why some companies such as Motorola and Nokia, who were among the leading pioneers in establishing significant R&D activity in China, initially seemed to have considerable success, but over time have lost a significant part of their market share. Various explanations are put forward for the performance of these companies globally, but their experience may provide a warning to other companies about their long term expectations from the Chinese market. The new policy of indigenous innovation in China may make it difficult for foreign companies to grow their market share over time. Also expecting China to produce innovative products that may help them dominate global markets may be expecting too much. The role of the state in promoting its own technology standards, particularly in areas like 3G telephony [6], may also help explain how things have evolved. This overly nationalistic approach towards technology development, which is part of the push for technology autonomy, has not been very successful and even Chinese companies like Huawei, who had already become internationalised, were reluctant to become wedded to a standard which had an uncertain future. This type of policy environment is not particularly suited to multinational technology companies that are focused on the global market. As we’ve seen very recently with the ripping-off of entire games!  ↩ Such as this year’s verdict on the Chinese-national who spied on Motorola, but was found not to be a state-sponsored spy.  ↩ Such as China’s ZTE; also Huawei, which is now the world’s largest telecoms firm by revenue.  ↩ An interesting example of this is how most of the profit and value from the “assembled in China” iPhones and iPads goes back to the US.  ↩ Both Nokia and Motorola were the biggest losers in recent Canalys sales figures for China.  ↩ With China’s own 3G protocol called TD-SCDMA, which was foisted upon the largest telco, China Mobile.  ↩

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@InfoJakarta Shares How to Make the Most of Twitter

What can you do with 140 letters? A lot, reckons @InfoJakarta. The Indonesian city info specialist tweets virtually all topics and news about Jakarta, including sports, traffic, music, and even daily motivational quotes, all in 140 letters or less. We talked with the founder of @InfoJakarta, Willy Jonathan, about his reasons for using Twitter, and to discover his secrets to accumulating 260,000+ followers.

Willy, whose background goes back to his time in print media, explained that the reason he chose Twitter is not only because it is very similar to Blackberry usage (which is very popular in Indonesia), it is also a very friendly medium for mobile. Willy shared a few facts and figures about @InfoJakarta:

• 260,718 followers with a daily growth of around 400.
• The followers then are directed to the newly developed InfoJakarta website, which sees about 5,000 daily visitors.
• There are around 127,000 mentions of @InfoJakarta every month. So every 30 seconds there will be one mention aimed at @InfoJakarta.
• Follower demographics are primarily university students and young executives living in Jakarta.

Willy stressed that all those visitors came purely from Twitter, and the growth is organic. He added that Twitter is democratic, that people can follow and unfollow the account easily. He said, “Adding a follower is even harder than you might think.”

So how did @InfoJakarta grow to that number in only two and a half years? Willy explains it in one word: “discipline.” For the first two years, he served as the administrator, working on the Twitter account alone. He looked for news, tweeted about it, and chatted with his followers during that time. Right now @InfoJakarta tweets around 100 messages every day, and the team has grown to 6 persons.

What InfoJakarta Tweets About

Willy told us that there are mainly three activities on @InfoJakarta. The first one is traditional news which he gets not only from other online media, but also from his own followers.

On several occasions, @InfoJakarta has received and delivered news faster than any other media. This is because it receives real-time information from its followers spread all over Jakarta. When there was a bus incident involving its radiator, for example, @InfoJakarta followers who were among the bus’ passengers tweeted about it and took some pictures of the scene. Some of @InfoJakarta’s followers are so loyal that they volunteer to find news for @InfoJakarta every day, and Willy said the followers are quite responsible about their tweeted information.

The second activity it engages in is communicating with followers. More often than not, businesses use Twitter only to feed and push news, but Willy saw Twitter as a tool to interact with people. With Twitter, he can moderate, direct, give feedback, and ultimately influence people. @InfoJakarta does this by asking for people’s opinions once in a while, then retweeting interesting opinions that come from its followers. It will make the followers feel appreciated, and in return, this will strengthen their sense of belonging, and their bond, with @InfoJakarta. He adds:

If you tweet asking about people’s opinion on [the city’s public bus transportation] Transjakarta on Twitter, people will start talking. [Jakarta citizens] want to communicate, they have some kind of bond that we are all Jakarta citizens.

@InfoJakarta doesn’t only ask questions, it sometimes also retweets people’s questions so that other followers might help answer them. Sometimes, @InfoJakarta retweets people’s emergency requests, such as someone looking for a specific type of blood donor. In these situations, @InfoJakarta will contact the person immediately to check its validity, then retweet it to its 260,000 followers. Willy said that people will always come and help out.

The third one is implementing a daily Twitter theme. It’s similar with how radio shows use subjects as a talking-point, but here it’s done with hashtags. For example, on certain nights, @InfoJakarta will open up its music hashtag [1], and let people use it to talk and spread their demo music. Every five minutes, @InfoJakarta will retweet each demo with its music link to all of its users. Also, every morning @InfoJakarta will tweet a lot of motivational quotes to help cheer up the sleepy folks who are stuck in the hellish Jakarta traffic.

@InfoJakarta mainly earns money through advertised tweets. Willy said that his followers are understanding people, and they realise that he has to earn money for its administrators. I was not able to draw more information from Willy regarding the advertisement fee, but he said that it is not every day that @InfoJakarta will have an advertised tweet.

There are growing trends for other city info Twitters such as @infobandung and @infobogor. Willy explained that they are not his, but they are all working together under one big network, comprised of nine cities, and have gathered around one million followers in total. Sometimes @InfoJakarta will tweet with @infobogor back and forth regarding the weather. If there’s heavy rain in Bogor, then there’s a chance that the water will travel downward to Jakarta and become a flood there. So sometimes @infobogor tweets at Willy and tells him in Jakarta to get ready when such a situation occurs. He said that his followers found it funny reading a conversation between Jakarta and Bogor like that.

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1. The #JktMusic is not active in the Ramadan month, which would explain why it is no longer indexed on Twitter. @InfoJakarta plans to start the forum again at the beginning of September.

    ↩

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Take Care, Gary Wang! So Long, Tudou!

18th August, 2011 Tudou, the respected leading online video company got listed on NASDAQ; 21 August, the merge of YouKu and Tudou has been approved; 24 August 2012, th trading of Tudou on NASDAQ is suspended; 00:34 of 24th August 2012, Gary Wang, the cofounder and CEO of Tudou said on its weibo, quite emotionally,

7-years old Tudou, is going to retire tonight. Thanks to everyone for every piece they’ve left in this story… I will see you in next interesting dream.

Last time I spoke to Gary is back to 2011, 18th August, hours before Tudou’s IPO. He said, “I am very excited and also very looking forward to the new journey for Tudou.” And I guess few people could expect the new journey would only last one year. Not sure if it’s good ending for Tudou, probably only Gary can tell.

 

 

According to some report, with the merge, Youku side will take 71.5% share of the new company and the rest 28.5% is for Tudou. Gary will be the board member of the new company for a year, but will not be involved with any daily operation, in other words, Gary actually retires too.

The industry cheers the merge because the new company is clearly the leading online video company in China which could largely bring down the cost of video content. Anyhow, we will see how it goes soon in near future.

Gary, is one of few Chinese entrepreneurs I truly respect, he is a poet rather than a business man, which make him very unique in Chinese internet.  Take care, man! We really looking forward to seeing your new dream.

 

 

 

Related posts:

1. Tudou, the Chinese Potatoes Finally Got IPO, Gary Wang Said He’s Excited and Confident
2. Tudou Q3 Financial Results Shows Improvement
3. Tudou’s 3-Year Birthday Gift, $57 Millions Forth Round Fund Confirmed

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Why attend Lean Startup Machine Singapore, powered by SingTel Innov8?

Lean Startup Machine Singapore, powered by SingTel Innov8, is less than two weeks away and we are super excited to engage this startup community. Of course, we couldn’t have done it without our Co-Organizer e27, awesome sponsors, partners, and mentors.

This workshop focuses on the application of Lean Startup and Customer Development. Many of you have read The Lean Startup, and have perhaps wondered how you can take advantage of the science of entrepreneurship.

Through this 3-day workshop, our team and the mentors will provide tools and guidance to help you engage in Build-Measure-Learn loops with real customers. Yes, you read that correctly. We push our attendees to “get out of the building,” a phrase coined by Steve Blank.

Singapore based mentors such as Hugh, Vinnie & Jeff, Carl & James, Scott, etc. (the list goes on) are all very active in promoting Lean Startup. Our sponsors also made it possible to help us contribute to bringing some mentors like Benjamin, Calvin, Phil, Efraim in the region to Singapore.

I am super excited about this upcoming event, and I believe deeply in what we can achieve at this workshop. It is my sincere hope to see Lean Startup grows with this community. Singapore is already a top ten startup ecosystem in the world, and the only way is up from here.

About the Author

Ray is passionate about working with entrepreneurs. Lean Startup, Ruby on Rails are two things he spends a lot of time working on and thinking about. He facilitates Lean Startup Machine workshops around the world, and is an avid foodie. He blogs at http://raywu.tumblr.com/

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10+ Indian Startups that pivoted (successfully)

“Startups are nimble. Plan A assumptions rarely survive their first interaction with users. Most startups succeed with their version 3 (if lucky).”

We’ve heard these so many times!

Yet when the time comes, its easier to get cold feet and freeze in ‘trying hard’ to ‘make it work’ rather than chuck it for a new idea, new market – it just seems too risky and there’s the trauma of having to give up on the idea you really really believed in.

But it’s true that pivots have helped many not only recover from a pointless chase of a vision shared by none (especially not customers) but even attain big success! We decided to recount a few stories about pivoting in India that were worth telling!

Pivot: Shift? Ctrl Fn or Get Locked!

Here is our list of 10+ Indian startups who pivoted well:

Webklipper to WebEngage

Started as a WebKlipping system, WebEngage pivoted to a customer engagement tool/feedback service and raised funding from IAN and GTI Capital.

Cofounder, Avlesh shares his candid thoughts behind the decision to pivot:

“Pivoting is one of the most difficult decisions for a company – for two reasons, first the world labels you a failure and second, the world doesn’t believe that you’d be able to make it either with the new product. At Webklipper, we didn’t care about the world. That’s the only difference. We were the first ones to realize that this (annotation) product is not going to make money for us. It needed a far more bigger gestation period than we imagined. We needed to pay office bills. Hence the pivot. Simple.”

WebEngage, was our second product idea and worked well. We are the feedback, survey and notification backbone of over 3200 businesses worldwide as of this morning. We have raised money twice. If these stats were not as great, we’d have pivoted again. Simple!

Why we think its worked : Well, data driven is data driven and needs little other proof!

MingleBox: From Socionet TO Educational content site

Minglebox started as a social network and was one of the hottest startup in 2007. The company raised funding from Sequoia, launched several interesting services including streaming music, which was later shutdown. The company eventually pivoted to an educational content company, helping students find the best colleges and courses through online admission help and counselling services.

Why we think it worked: They were starting to compete with wide portals and social networks in their earlier avatar – a pretty steep challenge hardly negotiable with not very deep pockets. Education, colleges and students in India, on the other hand, has always been a big market online that the team actually were sharp enough to notice as they faced challenges.

[Recommended Read: Keep Going OR Give up? The Art of Failure]

Roopit to Exotel : Classifieds that ran into a (good) telecom problem (to solve).

Launched in 2010, Roopit started as a micro-blogging styled classified site and founder, Shivku actually came across a ‘personal itch’ that is now known as Exotel.

Exotel is a cloud telephony service (launched @UnPluggd) and raised INR 2.5Cr Series A Funding from Mumbai Angels & Blume Ventures.

Why we think it worked : Shivku was trying to solve an online-offline connect issue and created solutions where he couldn’t find any. Since he realized this solution filled a major gap, he acted quickly and completely focused on this.

redBus (was an early pivot) : B2B to B2C

Bus ticketing service, redBus’ initial concept was around selling bus booking software to operators. The company totally changed the business model and focused more on consumer segment to gain traction.

Why we think it worked : The bus operators had existing ways of doing things, and no real reason to change. Clearly the pain points at the consumer level were stronger and would prove to eventually drive change in the whole industry.
[Read: The redBus story]

Flipkart/Infibeam : Ok – just more categories

You may not want to call them a case of pivot, but they expanded into several categories, as they started figuring out the market gaps. Infibeam started as a portal to sell second hand cars and Flipkart started off selling books.

They now sell everything.

Why we think its a good one : For one, its important for an online trading business to be diverse – consumer behaviour on any one product category could change too suddenly and leave them vulnerable if its their primary or only one (Youtube vs Channel V/MTV, and ebooks vs print!). Also, it gives them a wider customer base and an opportunity to upsell better and increase yield per customer, eventually.

Inmobi: Mobile coupons. No, search. No, ads! No, …. ?

Probably the best pivot instance from India, InMobi started off as mKhoj, mobile based local search play, raised funding and later, pivoted to ad network. And there may be more happening soon!

They are actually now more than an ad network (watch cofounder, Naveen Tiwari’s inspiring talk @UnPluggd: The InMobi story)

Why we think it worked : Consumer facing mobile startups were more or less completely dependent on operator partnerships, as well as limited in growth till a few years ago up until mobile data and apps made independent plays feasible. Serving mobile ads, on the other hand, was a B2B sales problem and if you had a good sales team which inMobi did, and built aggressively, you could grow it.

Myntra : Custom designed to lifestyle ecommerce

One of the first players to get into custom designed products, Myntra closed down the custom design unit and pivoted to selling lifestyle products.  The last round of funding raised was $20mn and the company is now targeting INR 500 Crores revenue in FY 2012-13.

Why it has worked better : Custom designed – and especially self-designed – merchandize in a relatively small online market was always a tough battle at any sort of scale, at least till a couple of years ago. At the same time, the growing interest in ecommerce meant that deeper pockets would ensure some marketshare (in their case, in relatively high margin categories), which the funding did help achieve. Still early days, of course.

SMSGupshup : Group SMS to Messaging app

From Webaroo to SMS based socionet to latest avatar, messaging app, SMSGupshup has pivoted consistently. The company has raised $47mn funding in total and its latest avatar, i.e. Gupshup.me is aimed at being the WhatsApp for India (they earlier prefered to be called ‘Twitter of India’ by US media).

Why we think its happened : Mostly because nobody – included Rajesh Jain’s MyToday – ever figured out a viable business model around group messaging and SMS services. The large audience base did bring in investor interest – and who knows – there may still be a lot of opportunity left in creating a better, Indian audience specific avataar of WhatsApp.

Guruji.com : Search, Music and now Ad Platform

From India focused search engine to mobile ad optimization platform (Adiquity), Guruji is one of those startups who stayed grounded, kept trying and eventually found a niche. The previously successful service, music search was a big hit, but was shutdown after a lawsuit from T-series.

Why we think its working : Ad networks are probably not a winner-take-all story, unlike search, and there’s little chance of obvious legal trouble. Guruji has probably seen enough rough patches to learn how to survive and battle the odds. Yes, sometimes that’s what counts the most!

EyesAndFeet to UnMetric

From EyesAndFeet, a social media analytics firm to UnMetric, social media benchmarking tool, the startup has come a long way and recently raised $3.2mn in Series A funding led by Nexus Venture Partners.

From an earlier discussion with EyesAndFeet cofounder, Lux (read: Pivoting: From EyesAndFeet to UnMetric [Interview]):

“Earlier this year, I was in the US – pitching EyesAndFeet to potential GTM partners (like Amex Open Forum, etc). During the course of this (and some conversations in India), two things happened:

a) I met restaurant owners, restaurant consultants etc – while they saw benefit in EyesAndFeet, I saw how much of a challenge it will be to cost effectively reach these people and get trials going. While possible, it would take time – and money.

b) I met a lot of old friends and classmates (I try and stay/catch up with as many friends as I can when I travel). I’d demo eyesandfeet to anyone who would listen. In the course of these casual conversations, I had (on a few occasions) friends at Citi, Amex, Pepsi etc saying “this is interesting; wish we had some competitive intelligence on social media – for our sector”  – that was when I first thought of Unmetric, and that we might be better off focusing on enterprise customers rather than small businesses.

That time, when we decided to (to use a cliche) “pivot”, was a difficult time. My co-founders, Kumar and Jose (tech gods, great friends, and classmates from over 20 years ago at IIT Madras) had just drunk the EyesAndFeet koolaid, and here I was, trying to convince them otherwise. Once we were all convinced, we set to work and rapidly built Unmetric over 6 months! Interestingly, I also kept sharing wireframes, mockups, alphas etc with “friendly” potential clients – to gauge their feedback. If the initial response is anything to go by, I think we have certainly struck a chord.

Why this made the list : The story above says it all – the founders listening to what they heard and being able to cast aside their firmly held belief about how great their earlier idea was. The market knows best – stay tuned in!

Trolly to Crowdnub

Social Commerce product Trolly, which was launched in 2011 (parent company, Adepto raised $300K from Blume Ventures/Rajiv Dadlani Group) pivoted to launch Crowdnub, a social marketing platform that can potentially give any brand the power of a bespoke application on a SaaS platform.

Cofounder Kiran shared the decision behind pivoting [read: Social Commerce product Trolly pivots to CrowdNub, a social marketing platform

"..Trolly was built just for eCommerce businesses and that was the problem. The solution was to expand the funnel and make the Trolly proposition relevant to other businesses as well. But that meant we had to break down the rigidities and rebuild it grounds up.

A young tech company will make many trips back to the drawing board until it finds market fit and acceptability. Every such story is an experience, a lesson, and possibly, an inspiration.

Ditto!

ibibo : From blogging platform to …

Started as a blogging platform, ibibo experimented in several avatars and is now fully focused gaming company. Though not really a startup (well funded by Naspers group), very few of ibibo peers from web2.0 era have managed to survive.

The company has launched several of Naspers product in India - including WeChat, UCWeb and has also forayed into ecommerce segment via Tradus and launched payment gateway service, PayU.

Why we think its happened : The Google(s ) and Facebook (s ) of the world ate the social networking pie totally. So for an Indian Internet company, that market is hardly available anymore (unless there is certain differentiation, which ibibo didn’t have).

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Know of more such instances? Please feel free to share them in the comment section (and we will add it up here).

Ofcourse, a lot of pivots have been to the flavour-of-the-season, i.e. ecommerce; but we have stayed away from calling them pivots, as they were mostly front-end pivots and no serious thoughts was given to improving the backend operations etc. Some of these have been merely a desperate clutching at straws with no serious thought to why that pivot was a good one or if there was a USP or a niche that was worth building upon.

Recommended Read: Is Pivoting Your Latest Excuse To Not Talk To Customers?

[Wit inputs from Sameer Sisodia]

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SearchMan Wants to be a SEO Superhero for Your App

When launching a website, everyone knows that it’s critical to consider search SEO. But what about for smartphone apps? How discoverable is your app? AppGrooves claims to have a solution for this problem in its new SearchMan service. Readers may recall that we wrote about the company’s previous version of the product, AppSEO, back in February.

AppGrooves is led by its Japanese co-founder Naoki Shibata, and the startup currently resides at 500Startups. We got in touch with him to find out how this differs from the previous AppSEO initiative:

With AppSEO, we gathered & analyzed data only for the apps that belonged to our users. This was a small percentage of the entire AppStore because we were new. Based on initial positive user feedback, we got more ambitious. We realized that if we are serious about enabling search and discoverability of the best mobile apps, we had to do more. So now, we gather ranking data for search, directory, and user ratings on the whole market.That’s 600,000 apps x 1m keywords x 2 devices x 3 stores every day (UK launching soon).

Naoki adds that with this upgrade, they correspondingly upgraded their branding to ‘SearchMan,’ which he describes as a powerful data-driven superhero.

They’ve put together some recommended best practices in the slide below. So if you think your app could be doing better in the SEO department, you might want to give this a look.

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Chinese ‘Developer’ Steals Game Engine, Sells it For Half Price

Recently we’ve been bringing you the saga of Cloudstone, a Western-developed indie game that was totally copied by Chinese “developers” and remains hosted on Tencent’s game platforms. Think that was just an isolated example? Think again.

Meet Impact, a Javascript game engine developed and sold by Dominic Szablewski that helps users make HTML5 games. Now meet Impact’s illegal ‘Chinese version’; an exact copy of Szablewski’s site and product that Szablewski has absolutely nothing to do with. The only differences are that the copied version costs way less, it comes with no after-sales support, and the money it generates is deposited into the bank account of a thief, not the engine’s real developer.

The real Impact site is on the left; the site illegally selling copies of Impact for half price is on the right

Szablewski says he first became aware of that someone in China was copying his website and illegally selling his game engine back in June. He told Tech in Asia:

I first tried to contact [the guy who stole my game engine] directly via email. Asked what he was up to and what it would take to make him stop. Obviously I never received an answer.

A few days later I emailed his hoster [the US-based Softlayer] with the request to suspend his account. Again, never received an answer.

On June 19th I registered an account on kilofox.net [the illegal Chinese copy's domain] to look at the site a bit closer. The response to this was a DOS attack on impactjs.com [the official Impact website] that brought the site down temporarily.

The copied site, kilofox.net, is registered to one Long Yang, and the address listed along with its registration is in Harbin, the capital of China’s Heilongjiang province, although the Kilofox site suggests Long may now live in Beijing. When contacted by Tech in Asia with an request for an interview, Mr. Long responded:

The website [kilofox.net] is mine, but the product is not mine. I don’t think an interview is necessary.

Further attempts by this site to contact Mr. Long have been ignored.

Interestingly, Long’s site is hosted by Softlayer, a US-based hosting company that one would expect to be more responsive to claims of copyright violation. But Szablewski says that Softlayer has not been helpful:

On July 5th I got someone from Softlayer on the phone who told me that they can only respond to DMCA takedown requests. So I prepared a DMCA and sent it via fax to Softlayer. I never heard back and finally gave up on the whole thing.

A Softlayer customer service representative confirmed to Tech in Asia that Softlayer does require a DMCA report to investigate copyright claims, but further requests for comment or clarification on this specific case went ignored by Softlayer. The copied site is still up and is conducting business as usual.

Needless to say, this whole incident has been quite damaging to Szablewski’s business:

The bottom line is: I don’t know how many sales I lost. Prior to all this, I sold about 3-6 licenses per month to Chinese customers. This has gone down to about 2 licenses per month, while sales for all other countries have gone up. With numbers this low, it’s hard to say if it’s a fluke or really a consequence of the Chinese clone.

Since kilofox.net went online, I received numerous emails from Chinese customers who were confused whether the site was legitimate. After I told them it was not, they expressed how disappointed and embarrassed they were that someone from their country stole my product.

It’s a tough situation really. It’s not so much the sales I lose because of this, but the reputation for the game engine. I.e. when someones buys it from the fake site and does not receive the service and updates they would get from me.

That’s all depressing enough, but here’s the reason why this kind of thing should be taken seriously by every single person doing business in China. Szablewski told Tech in Asia:

I had some very happy customers from China and I would love to continue selling it in China, but honestly, stuff like that makes it hard for me to see China as a viable country to do business in.

That attitude is pretty widespread outside China and, as this case and the case of Cloudstone illustrates, it’s not unfounded. Do the majority of people in China’s tech industry pull tricks this dirty and lazy? Of course not. But perhaps more could be done within the community to discourage this kind of copying because it is destroying China’s reputation as a good place for smart people in technology to do business.

It also seems like Softlayer should be taking this more seriously than it apparently is. Perhaps there was some problem with the DMCA report Szablewski submitted, but if that’s the case, Softlayer apparently considers itself above explaining that to us.

This kind of theft should be approached from several directions at once. China’s tech community needs to be more direct and more vocal about its distaste for this sort of behavior. Hosts — whether they’re American, Chinese or anything else — need to take copyright violations seriously and investigate and rectify problems swiftly. Ideally, the thieves would also be brought up of criminal charges or at least forced to provide financial compensation to the people they’ve stolen from. That last one may be more difficult to accomplish given the complex nature of international law, but the first two should be easy. Why aren’t they happening?

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GREE Hopes New Dev Partnerships Will Help it Corner North American Mobile Games Market

Japanese social gaming giant GREE (TYO:3632) has made some new developments in its expansion into North America, with some key developer partnerships for his mobile social gaming platform to help solidify its efforts in the region. Here’s a quick overview of the indie developers it will be working with:

At GREE's botth at Tokyo Game Show 2011

• SkyVu Entertainment: Named one of the top developers of 2012, this is the studio behind Battle Bears which boasts 18 million downloads. SkyVu will release ‘Battle Bears Zero’ exclusively with GREE.
• InfiniDy: Based out of Kitchener-Waterloo in Canada, this social games developer will be brining its new Happy Zoo Park title to the GREE platform. Happy Park, its freemium theme park game, already has more than 5.3 million downloads worldwide.
• Oceanside Interactive: This L.A.-based social gaming company focuses on RPGs for iOS, Android and Facebook. Its title MyDinos uses the GREE Global platform.
• Gamenauts: Its game Ninja Fishing will be coming to the GREE platform in Q4 2012. It has over 7 million players worldwide, and might be a fun supplement to my previous Ninja Farm addiction (a title from CyberAgent).

Regarding the partnerships, GREE International’s senior director of developer relations Ben Chen noted:

There is no doubt that the indie community is responsible for pushing innovation in our industry, and we’re incredibly excited to see our new partners excel.

Serkan Toto also pointed out yesterday that Konami’s Dragon Collection, one of GREE’s biggest hits, is now on GREE Global via an English version over on the Canadian app store. However, he’s skeptical about its chances for success outside Japan.

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